Previews

Left 4 Dead 2 Exclusive Preview

Spiffy:

Incredibly tense moments; new level design, weapons, and zombies make it feel like more than expansion.

Iffy:

Will the release of L4D2 split the player base and make it hard to find a game?

If you're like me then you've probably devoted some thought to what you'd do in the first moments of a zombie apocalypse. My friends and I plan on heading up to a cabin -- whose location I am sworn not to disclose -- where we'll hold out with all the guns and food we can muster from our parents. Heading to a military base is also an option for us, but we've all seen how that ends up in the movies...

Still, the common thread that runs through people's zombie apocalypse plans is that the defensible bunker is usually somewhere close to home -- especially if they already live in a remote community. Yet after my recent time with the Swamp Fever and Parish campaigns of Left 4 Dead 2, I'm beginning to wonder if wilderness is any better than the city after all.

The premise for the Swamp campaign is that the survivors head into a bayou in order to find refuge within a community which has refused aid from the military and outside sources. When you first arrive it seems hopeful, like perhaps their isolationist attitude could have held out against the outbreak. However, after a short distance you realize that you're in the f**king swamp -- aka no walls -- and that these people were really just sitting around waiting to get surrounded.

The Swamp is, from my understanding, the only mission in L4D2 that starts out in the night. The environment is eerie to say the least, and conjures up all the imagery that you've probably had nightmares about, or seen in a scary film or two. The funny thing is, swamps in the American South really do look like the dirty, disturbing environments portrayed in the game, and the team at Valve traveled south to do research on how to properly design the stage (though some liberties might have been taken with the Swamp people shacks, maybe?). The swamps are devoid of animal life, but the stillness in the level only accents the horror of having a zombie burst out of a bush, or emerge from right behind an everglade tree you're slowly pushing past while the murky water sucks at your feet.

Not all of the time spent in the swamps was spent sloshing around in the mud, though, as our team also fought through a shanty town. The shacks in the town take you up out of the water and away from the zombies below, but they also give you a false sense of security. As our team worked through the shacks -- which are connected only by planks that serve as bridges -- we quickly learned that the shacks are made from what must have been balsa wood, as they were either blown apart by our guns or by the force of the zombie hoards rushing towards us. Trying to maintain the high ground in order to stay alive proved a valuable tactic but could also be a liability, as Smokers could easily pull one of us down into the water, forcing our team to consider the choice of jumping in after the unlucky survivor or simply doing what we could from above.

It sounds like such a small thing, but the addition of a level-specific common infected, referred to as "common-uncommons" internally, completely alters the way a level like Swamp or Parish plays. In Swamp the level-specific zombies are mud men: zombies who run on all fours incredibly quickly, making them hard to detect, and especially so when they're in a couple feet of water. This resulted in our team having to be hyper-vigilant when wandering through the bayou, watching the water the way that Han Solo and company did when facing the Dianoga in the Death Star trash compactor. During the not-so-quiet moments, like when we were trying to protect a teammate who'd been covered in Boomer bile, these little zombies could come out of nowhere, providing ample distraction for other infected to close the gaps on our defensive positions. The Parish campaign also featured a level-specific zombie in the form of biohazard suit infected, whose invulnerability to fire created some tough situations when we were relying on molotovs to provide safety.